wing and I can't. Gee, we musta passed each other on the road
somewhere, because I was streaking it down here to see you--gee, but
you look good to me!--and you were streaking it up there to see me--"
The adorable young voice hesitated and deepened to a yearning
half-whisper. "Did you go away up there just because you--_wanted_ to
see me? Did you do that, mother? Honest?"
Mrs. Singleton Corey snapped into wakefulness, but she still leaned
heavily within her curve of Jack's good arm. Her eyes--brown, and
very much like Jack's--stared up with a shining, wonderful gladness
into his face. But she was Mrs. Singleton Corey, and she would not act
the sentimental fool if she could help it!
"Yes, I--thought I should have to dig you out of a snowdrift,
you--young--scamp!"
"She'd a done it, believe _me_! Only I wasn't in any snowdrift, so she
couldn't--God love her!" He was half crying all the while and trying
to hide it; and half laughing, too, and altogether engrossed in the
joy of being able to hold his own mother like that, just as he had
hungered to do up there on the mountain.
It was the doctor who saw that emotion had reached the outer edge of
safety for Mrs. Singleton Corey. Over her head he scowled and made
warning signs to Jack, who gave her a last exuberant squeeze and let
the doctor lead her to a chair.
"I've got a wife out in the taxi, mother," he announced next. "She
wouldn't come in--she's afraid you won't like her. But you will, won't
you? Can't I tell her--"
"Bring her right in here to me, Jack," said Mrs. Singleton Corey,
gasping a bit, but fighting still for composure to face this miracle
of a pitying God.
Bit by bit the miracle resolved itself into a series of events which,
though surprising enough, could not by any stretch of the credulity be
called supernatural.
Mrs. Singleton Corey learned that, with a bullet lodged somewhere in
the upper, northwest corner of Jack's person, he had nevertheless
managed to struggle down through the storm to Marston, with Marion
helping him along and doing wonders to keep his nerve up. They had
taken the train without showing themselves at the depot, which was
perfectly easy, Jack informed her, but cold as the dickens.
She managed to grasp the fact that Jack and Marion had been married in
Sacramento, immediately after Jack had his shoulder dressed, and that
they had come straight on to Los Angeles, meaning to find her first
and face the music afterwards. She was made to understand how terribly
in earnest Jack had been, in going straight to the chief of police and
letting the district attorney know who he was, and then telling the
truth about the whole thing in court. She could not quite see how that
had settled the matter, until Jack explained that Fred Humphrey was a
good scout, if ever there was one. He had testified for the State, but
for all that he had told it so that Jack's story got over big with the
jury and the judge and the whole cheese.
Fred Humphrey had remembered what Jack had shouted at the boys when
they fired. "--And mother, that was the luckiest call-down I ever
handed the bunch. It proved, don't you see, that the hold-up was just
a josh that turned out wrong. And it proved the boys weren't planning
to shoot--oh, it just showed the whole thing up in a different light,
you know, so a blind man had to see it. So they let me go--"
"If you could have seen him, you wouldn't have wondered, Mrs. Corey!"
Marion had been dumb for an hour, but she could not resist painting
Jack into the scene with the warm hues of romance. "He went there when
he ought to have gone to the hospital. Why, he had the highest
fever!--and he was so thin and hollow-eyed he just looked simply
pathetic! Why, they wouldn't have been human if they had sent him to
jail! And he told the whole thing, and how it just started in fooling;
and why, it was the grandest, noblest thing a boy could do, when the
others had been mean enough to lay all the blame on Jack. And he had
his shoulder all bandaged and his arm in a sling, and he looked so--so
brave, Mrs. Corey, that--"
Mrs. Singleton Corey reached out and patted Marion on the hand, and
smiled strangely. "Yes, my dear--I understand. But I think you might
call me mother."
If it cost her something to say that, she was amply repaid. Marion
gave her one grateful look and fled, fearing that tears would be
misunderstood. And Jack made no move to follow her, but stayed and
gathered his mother again into a one-armed imitation of a real
bear-hug. I think Jack wiped the last jealous thought out of Mrs.
Singleton Corey's mind when he did that. So they clung to each other
like lovers, and Jack patted her white cloud of hair that he had never
made bold to touch since he was a baby.
"My own boy--that I lost from the cradle, and did not know--" She
reached up and drew her fingers caressingly down his weathered cheek,
that was losing some of its hardness in the softer air of the South.
"Jack, your poor old mother has been cheating herself all these years.
Cheating you too, dear--"
"Not much! Your cub of a son has been cheating himself and you. But
you watch him make it up. And--mother, don't you think maybe all this
trouble has been kind of a good thing after all? I mean--if it's
brought the real stuff out to the surface of me, you know--"'
"I know. The gold in us all is too often hidden away under so much
worthless--"
"Why, forev--" In the doorway Marion checked herself abruptly, because
she had resolved to purify her vocabulary of slang and all frivolous
expressions. Her eyelids were pink, her lips were moist and tremulous,
her face was all aglow. "I--may I please--mother--"
Mrs. Singleton Corey did not loosen her hold of Jack, but she held out
her free hand with a beckoning gesture. "Come. I'm going to be a
foolishly fond old lady, I know. But I want to hold both my children
close, and see if I can realize the miracle."
"Mother!" Jack murmured, as though the word held a wonderful, new
meaning. "Our own, for-keeps mother!"
THE END
NOVELS _By_ B.M. BOWER
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